The Conversation
by sammyiammy
Summary: Since the birth of his children, Harry's been ignoring the fact that someday they're going to... you know. Unfortunately, Lily brings the subject back to the forefront of his mind. Happy Christmas, Harry. Mentions of alcohol and sex.


"_Lily!_ Come here _right now_."

There was a loud bang in the upper levels of the Potter home. A sound not unlike a long roll of thunder echoed throughout the entry hall as several doors slammed and a pair of feet came crashing down the staircase. Hair in disarray, shirt buttoned wrong, and sporting a fluorescent green headband was Lily Luna Potter. As soon as she saw the glowering face waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs a bright smile lit up her whole countenance. Reaching the ground floor, she smoothed her skirt and chirped, "Yes, Daddy?"

"Lily." That was all Harry could bring himself to say. In all fairness, it was probably all he _could_ say, face buried in his palm as it was. After a deep breath, he managed to add, "Remind me how old you are."

"Seventeen," said Lily. Her smile was beginning to waver.

Just as he suspected. Another long intake of air, and then: "Are you trying to kill me before you turn twenty?"

"Erm." In her head, Lily was face-palming. She was also imagining strangling her loose-lipped cousin Hugo and feeling absolutely no regret. "James already told me that I'm a hussy and I'm going to get pregnant, so we're all set there."

"Has anyone said anything to... _him_. The boy?"

"I dunno," she answered, shrugging. If she were being honest with him, she would tell him that she had no recollection of anything that happened the Saturday before, but that would probably result in a heart attack, and she could _not _be the one responsible for the death of the Boy Who Lived. "But if you kill him, Mum'll be angry with you. His mum's her good friend and the grief would not end well."

"It won't be the first time she's been angry with me," he said. There was almost a smile to go along with the words, but it froze in a grimace as he said, "Name, Lily."

Lily looked down at her toes. Half were painted turquoise, the project abandoned when she'd ran downstairs. "Lorcan or Lysander Scamander."

Once again he took a deep breath, this time looking a bit like he was trying to rip holes in the air with his teeth. "You don't know which one."

Putting on her most innocent face, the one that had gotten her out of far more detentions than even Filch could keep track of, Lily explained quickly, "They're identical twins, you see, and it was very dark at the time and also I may have been sort of completely and utterly smashed. So."

Harry decided it was a very good time to sit down. No chairs were in the vicinity, but that didn't stop him. Firmly seated on the wooden floorboards, he looked up at the ceiling and asked, "Why did I have a daughter?"

Though she was his sweet little girl, Lily had learned a thing or two from her older brothers. First, eat as much as you can when visiting the Burrow. It's far better to throw up after eating too much of Grandmum Weasley's cooking in too short a time than to have to eat the dinner their mum inevitably prepared when they returned home, attempting to outdo her mother. Second, never throw your apple cores in the Black Lake. The squid gets a little too excited. And, third and most importantly, always change the subject when Dad was polishing his glasses. So, with all the subtlety of the Potter family in her voice, Lily blurted out, "Al went club-hopping through gay bars last night."

The glasses fell to the floor.

"Oh, Merlin."

Rocking back and forth on her naked heels, Lily clucked her tongue and said delicately, "I dunno where you went wrong with him. I've always considered you to be a wonderful father, full of advice and other paternal good things. It must've been Uncle George's doing."

"Lily."

"Yes, Daddy?"

Sounding a bit like a refugee asking for water, Harry said, "Please tell me there's nothing I need to know about James."

"Er." For a moment, she looked to be in physical pain as she wracked her brain for tidbits about her eldest brother. "He has a girlfriend and is sharing a flat with Scor? That's really about it. Apparently, he turned out to be the good kid."

The glasses returned to his face. Not only was James training to be an Auror, he wasn't actively attempting to kill his father's hope in the day's youth. Harry could have cried tears of joy. "Thank Merlin."

"Oi! That was supposed to be the perfect time for you to say, 'No, Lily, you've always been the good one and also my favorite.' I gave you a lead-in and everything!"

She looked startlingly like her mother when she got angry, the only difference being that her eyes were a different color. The fact that there were, in fact, blue eyes glaring at him rather than brown was the only thing that kept Harry from backing down completely. Instead, he leapt to his feet and cried, "You weren't ever supposed to let me know that you were... doing things! With boys!"

"Only one boy, Daddy!" Lily was quickly changing her angle to pouting. "And you've always said you liked him!" A quick rethink and she corrected herself. "Them."

Irrationally, a grin spread across his face. "You don't even know which one."

"Does it make you feel better that I never intended to tell you?"

The smile got smaller by a few molars, but hung onto his face, crinkling his stubble-flecked cheeks. "Yeah, it does, actually."

"Great!" said Lily with a clap of her hands and her own matching grin. She spun on her heel, fulling intending to head back up the stairs to her room. "Let's just forget this ever happened, then, shall we?"

Only his sudden grip on her upper arm kept Lily from running. Slowly he turned her to face him, looking down at his baby. "A good father wouldn't do that."

Suppressing her urge to say, "Then we have no problem, do we?", Lily made her eyes as large as she could before flinging herself into his arms. "Daddy! Please don't me mad at me. _Please._ I'll tell Mum everything and let her be angry and lecture me and lock me away in the owlery, but please, please don't be mad."

"I'm not angry." Although he was speaking into her hair, something about the way the tension drained from her shoulders told him that she was beaming into his shoulder. "I am disappointed, though."

"But, _Daddy_. You and Mum have always said you wanted grandkids, right?"

Harry stiffened inside her embrace. "... what."

"Oh, Merlin. I'm not pregnant with the next editor of the Quibbler, I swear. But the point was that if you want grandchildren, one day James and Al and I are going to have to... you know - we're going to have to if you want little feet running through the hallways of the Auror office again."

Inwardly groaning, Harry grabbed his daughter by the shoulders and pushed her far enough away that he could look her sternly in the eye. "_That_ is a fact I decided to ignore long before any of you were born. I will say, though, that I hope you know who you're- with. At that point."

"There's always artificial insemination."

"Exactly."

Sensing that she had avoided a major confrontation, Lily kissed him on the cheek and extricated herself from his death-grip. Careful not to smudge her toenail polish, she took off up the stairs, calling behind her, "Happy Christmas!"

At the same moment her door slammed shut on the third floor, James came sliding into the room in his stocking-feet. The current apple of Harry's eye was panting wildly and had to double over for a moment to catch his breath. Behind him, a blond head peered around the doorframe, much closer to the ground than it probably should have been. There were fuzzy gray ears sticking out from James' thatch of messy black hair, twitching in response to the yelling that had just started up above all of their heads. It sounded as though his two younger siblings were screaming at each other. Wild-eyed, he attempted to stay calm as he asked his bedraggled father, "Do you have any idea how to get rid of leftover parts of an Animagus form?"

"Ask your mother." Harry summoned his coat from the where it hung on the banister and surveyed the blizzard going on outside. "I'm going to buy you more gifts."

**I don't own any of the characters in this story, JK Rowling does. Thank you for reading and I hope you liked it (or hated it...) enough to review!~**


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